I had
taken over Yusef’s house when he moved to Australia with his new wife.
I, however, do not

recall
asking Mona Lisa to marry me. I spoke to her several years ago, after
about thirteen years o

f silence
between us, and she tried to remind me of these events. But seemingly,
after I left Louisiana,

I blotted out of my conscious mind many
of the painful events between us.

Letters of an Abiding Faith:

Legacy of a Slave's GrandDaughter to
her Son

written by Ella Lewis to her Son
(Rudolph Lewis)

* * * * *

Letter

35

December 6, 1985

My dear Son,

Just a line to Give answer to your Most Kind and
Welcomed letter. Also the Money I sure do thank you so much. You
dont know how much I apreshate it. I really need it. I do hope
this may Find you and your girl Friend doing Fine.* As For me I
feel Much Better than I Been. I just got the Checks to day.
Lucinda send them to me.

Well I hope you the Best of Luck in your
Marriage.* I hope you have a successful one. All the rest of the
Family is OK Far as I Know. We is having some Cold weather down
here. But we had a lovely Fall. The weather was nice. I wish I was
able to come down to the wedding But I not. But I praying For you
Hope you Find What you are looking For. All here wish you the
best.

I got the Book you sent I read part of it. Yet I
So Sorry you cant Come home For Xmas. I do hope you can Come in
Spring. Bunk is buying a house in Petersburg Va. I hope her good
luck. I glade to see Every Body trying to do Something in life.

Buggy Goodwyn was down in Nov.** He come to Va
stayed With SueGal a Week. He went to Norfolk Va get a Job. But it
diden Suit him the money wasn't Enough. So he went Back home.
Listen Who I suppose to send the money to For the pamphlet Book
you sent. I see the price on them. Let me Know. So you Be Good to
your self.

Bye Now From Mother

Rite soon

*
* * * *

Commentary

*My head was definitely in the
clouds during this period. I was possibly bewitched my Mona Lisa’s
creole charms. In my heart I can not remember much of what
occurred during this period. I do recall that Mona Lisa was
being put out of her house and I invited her to live with me on
Piety Street. I had taken over Yusef’s house when he moved to
Australia with his new wife. I, however, do not recall asking
Mona Lisa to marry me. I spoke to her several years ago, after
about thirteen years of silence between us, and she tried to
remind me of these events. But seemingly, after I left
Louisiana, I blotted out of my conscious mind many of the
painful events between us. I still possess the photos she gave
me of a house party at Piety in which we invited a number of
guests. None of them was really my friends, although I think
Gillian and her friend Joe attended that party.

Clearly, in my heart, I did not trust Mona
Lisa enough that I thought it was a match made in heaven. I had
known her less than a year and I was thirty-seven years old.
Even at that age, I was not a complete idiot. Moreover, I had
had already one failed marriage. Surely, I was not jumping blind
into another one. But maybe she was at an age or in a moral
state that marriage was important for her. I might have nodded
yes to the proposition, but did not take the matter seriously.
Obviously, I did mention it to Mama.

** James "Buggy" Goodwyn is Mama’s
grand nephew and my cousin. His father Freddie Goodwyn, a
jackleg preacher, was the only son of Aunt Sally, Mama's sister.

On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—

According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.

Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.

As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.